The Obituary
The steam traction engine was the first machine that drove itself across a farm or a road. Emerging in the late 1850s, it mounted a steam boiler on heavy iron wheels and used its own power to move, replacing teams of horses for hauling loads, ploughing fields, and driving threshing drums by belt. Specialized versions powered fairground rides and pulled ploughs in cable-hauled pairs. They were enormously powerful but slow, thirsty for coal and water, and needed a crew. The petrol and diesel tractor, lighter and ready at the turn of a crank, made the steam giants obsolete by the mid-20th century.
Worth remembering
- Ploughing engines worked in pairs, dragging a plough back and forth on a cable across a field.
- Showmen's engines, decorated and fitted with dynamos, lit and powered travelling fairgrounds.
Sources
- Traction engines were self-propelled steam engines used for farming and haulage Wikipedia
- Internal-combustion tractors displaced steam traction engines by the mid-20th century Britannica
A graveyard tradition: leave a stone to show you came, and remembered.